Round-Up: American Writers Museum, Bill Clinton, and Amazon
From a new museum honoring American writers to Bill Clinton’s next book deal, here’s the latest literary news.
“A Poet of the Intimate Spaces”: An Interview with Gbenga Adesina
The poems of Nigerian-born writer Gbenga Adesina speak to us across not only geographic distances, but also the vast expanses of the heart. His poems embody what he calls an “inexorable tenderness” that is often surprising, often moving—a voice that startles us awake to the possibilities of language.
Need and Greed in Fields and Mansions
Driving through southern fields makes visible one of the persistent paradoxes of American production: the coexistence of excess and need. Jean Toomer, writing in 1923, illustrates the disconnect between agricultural abundance and personal lack in his poem “Harvest Song.”
The Anthem Lucinda Williams Slipped Right Under Our Noses
When Occupy Wall Street was at its height, I heard more than once the argument that the movement’s official song should be Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” (even the Financial Times called it the “ultimate anti-work anthem”). Parton’s lyrics—like “it’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call
Review: FAIL BETTER by Beyza Ozer
Fail Better is expansive, moving across great distances to share with readers wholly intimate moments, but it is not a book that could be called timeless. Two poems in particular, “When I Kiss You, A Casket Opens” and “I’ve Watched Myself Die Twice This Week,” compel readers to reckon
On Colm Tóibín’s The Master and the Designed Self
I recently fell in love with Colm Tóibín’s The Master, a novel about the life of “master” writer Henry James. Notable writers such as Michael Cunningham describe the novel, shortlisted in 2004 for the Man Booker, as “almost shockingly close to the mystery of art itself.”
East and West: What Tagore Loved to Eat
Over the past several months, I have steeped myself in Tagore, trying to imbibe his songs and poetry and to know him as a man. As a Nobel Prize winner and a towering literary figure, Tagore is a cultural icon of Bengal. I have sought his soul and prided
Scaffolding
As people who will die someday, and whose loved ones will die someday, we all live with at least one large dark truth from which we often try to avert our gazes. This tension—knowing a thing, but living as far away from that knowledge as possible—surfaces in literature too.
Round-Up: Tehran International Book Fair, New NEA Funding, and LSU
From the thirtieth Tehran International Book Fair to the NEA budget, here's the latest literary news.
With Those We Love Alive and a Different Way to Write a Short Story
The medium we present something on, often defines the kinds of stories we can tell and how we tell them. In the digital age, With Those We Love Alive shows us another way to write a story even if its written on our skin.